Scraps of Moscow

"Information Direct from the Manufacturer": An interview with the guys behind Privesc.Eu

2009-11-21T01:40:00.004Z

First off, apologies for the long absence from this space - things have been genuinely busy at work, and I just haven't had the time. Fortunately, something I initiated back in early October, before I got busy, has finally born fruit.

I think I first wrote about Privesc.Eu back in July, on Moldova's second election day of 2009. At the time, I described it as

a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission... rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

And that evening, I watched on a laptop in my kitchen as the results came in and Privesc.Eu's live feed and open mic from the Central Electoral Commission picked up random conversations of journalists and election officials, including one where two people were discussing, in Russian, whether the country that had just voted should be called "Moldova" or "Moldavia."

Anyway, I was familiar with Privesc.Eu founder Mihai Moscovici as one of the first Moldovan bloggers I saw on the interwebs, and more recently from his prolific Facebook updates, and decided to ask if he and his collaborators on this interesting project would mind answering a few questions about what it has been like to launch an online public-access channel in the midst of what has to have been one of the most politically tumultuous years in Moldova's history.

To put this in an American context, these guys have created something that is a cross between CNN, C-SPAN, NPR, and hip-hop (rap music being, in the immortal words of Public Enemy's Chuck D, "CNN for Black people"), all with a level of interactivity that makes full use of all the capabilities Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?). I don't think they were the first to do it in Moldova (Public TV and JurnalTV were first, I think, by a matter of months), but the team behind Privesc.Eu has done a great job working with hardly any resources other than what they have contributed from their own time and pockets.

Before (or after) you read the interview, please consider contributing some amount, however small (or large!) to support the work of these young Moldovans who are working to improve transparency and people's access to government in their country and for the many labor migrants who might otherwise be out of touch with political developments at home. You can donate via PayPal (which takes all major credit cards) right here.

What motivated you to start this project?

On the way to democracy, Moldovan media find themselves forced to play the games of diverse political and economic interest groups, thus losing neutrality in presenting information to citizens. As a result, the Moldovan public is confused and is not discerning with respect to media coverage. Lately, international monitoring organizations have often criticized the Moldovan media for lack of objectivity, misleading reporting and one-sided presentations of information.

Since the Internet penetration rate in Moldova grows about 50% every year, online media coverage has long been a challenging journey for existing mainstream media, amateurs and new media projects. Still, there is a need for innovation and intense exploration to create new initiatives and progressively successful projects to satisfy the need of the Moldovan public for access to information online.

Information consumers, particularly youth, are looking to avoid media that only offer one-way information sharing and prefer to become participants in events and play their own role in the decision-making process.

We have started Privesc.Eu because there was a need for an innovative online platform which will give young people opportunities to share their opinions on real-time ongoing events, to instantly react and interact with each other, to ask questions, to be active and get involved in the country's daily life, to share and discuss their know-how, to organize and promote their own events, and, more than that, to share their activism by maintaining that platform.

Privesc.Eu is now an innovative online project, integrated with the latest social media elements and modern real-time data transmission technologies, that focuses on exposure of current events and on providing opportunities for social engagement for the Moldovan online youth community.

Did you start with a detailed business plan and specific goals, or just with a camera and a dream?

We started this project on July 5^th, 2009 in the central park in Chisinau. We had no business plan, but we had a dream, inspiration, and enthusiasm. In a few weeks, we realized that a business plan is necessary for the future of project, and eventually drafted one.

It occurred to me that Privesc.eu's content and goals are sort of like those of the C-SPAN channel in the U.S. Are you familiar with this channel, and if so, what do you think of the comparison?

One of our team members watched this TV channel while living in the US, but we didn’t know about it until we launched the project. We started Privesc.Eu following the needs of the Moldovan society. As for comparison, we look forward to establishing such a TV channel in Moldova :)

When did you begin broadcasting online, and how did you promote the site when you launched it? How quickly did you develop an audience, and how large is that audience now?

We started our broadcast on July 5^th, 2009, in the central park in Chisinau. On that day we set up the domain name for the project: www.Privesc.Eu (translated from Romanian as www.Watch.I).

We established two main directions of activity: provide live video streaming from the major events in the country (politics, economy, social, civil society, etc.); and establish user interaction to enable them communicate with each other and with the event organizers.

Since launching www.Privesc.Eu in July 2009, the site has continuously grown in traffic and user participation. In the first four months, the project has already become well-known among Moldovan young people in the country and abroad. Now we have more than 30,000 viewers per month. Every live stream on www.Privesc.Eu is watched and commented in real-time by 200 to 2000 visitors, depending on the event.

In addition, Privesc.Eu has more than 1000 fans on Facebook.

If you could start the project over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

If we would start over again, perhaps we would think more about better promotional methods than we have used so far.

Do the people involved have journalism backgrounds or more IT backgrounds? (Please feel free to discuss what the various members of the Privesc.eu team do professionally or not, and/or their educational backgrounds, as you prefer)

Privesc.Eu was developed and is maintained by an innovative and creative team of volunteer young professionals: two high-skilled web developers, a professional journalist, a marketing/PR specialist, and an inspired and dedicated project manager.

You and your partners have obviously spent a lot of your own time on this project - how have you found time for this in addition to doing whatever your "day jobs" are? And how much of your own money have you had to spend on equipment and other expenses (hosting, etc.)?

Five people are involved in this project: Eugeniu Luchianiuc, Vitalie Eşanu, Mihai Moscovici, Radu Chivriga, Oleg Ciubotaru. Each of them is responsible for a specific department: Tehnical Department - Vitalie Eşanu and Oleg Ciubotaru; Promotion and Marketing Department - Mihai Moscovici; Journalism and LIVE Video Streaming Department - Radu Chivriga and Eugeniu Luchianiuc. Every one of us has a primary job, but Privesc.Eu is more than just a hobby, it is a way for changing our society for better. We use our own equipment: laptops, microphones, webcams and 3G mobile internet services. Privesc.Eu is grown on enthusiasm and we don't seek any financial benefits from this project.

Have your expenses been covered by advertising revenue? Do you have any other sources of funding for the project (private donors, grants)?

On our web-site, we have a page where people can donate money through PayPal or to donate money to cover our mobile internet expenses through top-up terminals. Until now, we have 13 private donors who have donated a total of 400 USD. Also, we applied for a Soros Foundation grant and are currently waiting for their decision.

Why do you think online broadcasting is important in Moldova?

Privesc.Eu helps Moldovan internet users to have open access to unbiased, democratic, interactive, objective, as-is coverage of important events in Moldova. It helps citizens to form their own opinions based on pure and as-is information, avoiding journalistic comments and opinions.

Privesc.Eu fills the void of information about the situation and events in Moldova currently experienced by citizens working abroad, as well as by those living in the breakaway Transnistria region.

What do you think Privesc.eu provides viewers that they cannot get from TV or other mainstream media, or from already existing online sources such as YouTube?

Primarily, Privesc.Eu is a source of pure and as-is information about Moldova’s major events for citizens, as well as for international internet users, tourists, business people, potential investors, researchers and other people interested in Moldova.

Do you view your primary audience as being located in Chisinau? Moldovans overseas? Rural areas of the country? Romanians sympathetic to Moldova?

According to Google Analytics, last month we had viewers from 58 countries . Most of them are from Moldova – 27,000, Romania – 1,500, United States - 540, France - 500, Italy - 455. Moldovan viewers came mainly from 5 cities: Chişinău, Rîbniţa, Bender, Tiraspol and Balti.

Many Moldovan websites have Romanian-language and Russian-language versions (and often English-language as well) - is there a reason that Privesc.eu has only a Romanian-language interface?

We don't think this is a problem for Russian-speakers. Any visitor can easily click on the video and watch it as it is. Sometimes we cover events where people speak Russian. Also, there are many comments in Russian language during our live broadcast.

What has been the most memorable or most significant event you were able to broadcast this year (in the opinion of you and/or your partners)?

The day when we had the most traffic and the highest number of viewers so far, was July 29^th, when we presented the results of the elections in Moldova. On that day we had more than 6,000 live viewers. Also, some Romanian TV channels and national web-sites used our live video stream.

Have you had any difficulties with hackers attacking your site or with people spamming or acting as provocateurs in the comments section?

Yes, we have lots of provocateurs in the comments section, but didn’t have any hacker attacks.

Do you have any advice for people who might want to start similar projects in countries with semi-closed media systems? Why do you think it was possible for you to make a project like this happen in Moldova, and do you think it would be possible for people in places with more authoritarian governments, for example in Central Asia (or Transnistria)?

The main problem is with the quality of internet coverage in the country, and it depends also on the country's government. Live video streaming requires a good Internet connection, without it you can only do live blogging from the events.

What are your future plans for Privesc.eu? Do you have any plans to generate original content (roundtable discussions or interviews which would be exclusive to Privesc.eu), or will you continue to focus on providing direct coverage of government-related events without commentary?

We have lots of ideas, but it takes time and resources to develop them all, so we take one idea at a time. We already have a talk show called "Fara cenzura" ("No Censorship") it's a show that seeks to present the facts without editing the video. Follow Privesc.Eu and you’ll see many great things in the coming months.

Abkhazian National Library - a thank-you, and an R.I.P.

2009-10-10T11:55:00.000+01:00

When I visited Abkhazia this spring, I was assuming I would encounter a substantial degree of hostility toward me as an American. In fact, I encountered nothing of the sort. I also encountered substantially less Sovok than I had expected. One of the more pleasant experiences of my time in Sukhumi was visiting the national library and talking with the librarians and archivists there. These professionals offered me more research assistance than I would have expected to receive (having arrived unintroduced and unaccredited) in Moscow or Washington at similar establishments - granted, researchers aren't exactly beating down their doors, but still...

As it turned out, I happened to visit the researchers late on Wednesday afternoon, told them briefly the topic I was interested in and promised to return on Friday morning. The unfortunate thing about Friday morning was that I had to be across the border to Russia by early afternoon to make my flight home. But even though my time there on that Friday was a bit rushed, I still got the chance to look at a bunch of relevant newspapers and other articles thanks to the the library staff.

At one point, I asked whether it was OK for me to take pictures inside the library and was referred to the director. Little did I know that this was the same guy who had been responsible for restoring the place after it was practically burned out during the '92-'93 war.

Here are some more pictures from those tragic days. All of this lends a bit of flavor to the recent allegations by Georgians that the Ossetians in Tskhinvali, "like fascists," engaged in book-burning. Anyway, below are my pictures from the Abkhazian national library, taken in May of this year:

Papaskir National Library, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2418, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2415, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_3129, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2411, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"The feats of Heroes won't be forgotten for centuries"

IMG_2405, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Shrine to former president Vladislav Ardzinba - "A person born in the name of the salvation of his people and Fatherland" (who is apparently living out hisdays in a diminished capacity a la Ronald Reagan)

A Racist Restauranteur - Routine in Russia?

2009-10-10T11:40:00.000+01:00

This was a pretty amazing article - appeared a few weeks ago on the afisha.ru website and generated some reaction from the Moscow dining public. So I translated it:

White Russian
Zhenya Kuida, 18 Sept. 2009

"Our patio has been open all summer - it's a pity that no one really wrote about it. But we still did a great job with it - even on weeknights there was a line for it, people were booking tables an hour in advance. I've been scolded for the fact that not enough people know about our patio, but I just didn't have time, we built it all ourselves in a month, practically with our own hands, Arkady didn't even know. I heard he was going to hire another director for this restaurant and was on his way here to talk about that with me, but when he saw our patio he decided to let me keep my job."

Alexei, the director of Novikov's latest restaurant Tatler, is showing me sketches of how the interior is supposed to look. Inside they're doing the work (changing it from the restaurant which currently occupies the space, I Fiori), and for now only the white-curtained summer patio is open.

At the next table over, someone is smoking a hookah. The sketches show wooden tables, an open kitchen, Ralph Lauren furniture and clocks set to London time.

"Tatler is, after all, first and foremost a London magazine, the most important one about celebrities. Arkady really wants to make this restaurant more democratic, American-style, to get people to come here for lunch - big portions, big plates, an eclectic menu. It's true that we have a French chef, so this is difficult for him. At the last tasting Arkady took a long time explaining to him that he needs to have fewer fashionable things, that everything should be simpler. Why don't you order something, try something, everything is delicious, we have a new menu!"

The waiter walking by drops a menu, and Alexei rushes to help him. "I remember well what it's like to be on your feet all day. I myself am not from Moscow, I worked my first few years here as a bartender in a casino and then as a waiter in GQ Bar. I always found it interesting to work at the bar - even when I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a bartender and making cocktails."

Alexei's phone rings, and he has a long conversation about a car loan. "I want to buy a Volvo, maybe now they'll give me a loan, one of the co-owners [of the restaurant] is a banker, he promised to help, and now I have a decent salary. It was, of course, a big step for me to become a manager. Although I'm really young, I run pretty much everything in the restaurant - I hire the staff myself, I watch the till, I structure people's work. Arkady only looks after the chefs and other little things."

Two beefy Armenians sit down at the table next to us, and Alexei's face darkens.

"Of course this used to be a completely dead restaurant. When I became manager, I cam here and freaked out - the place was full of darkies ["черные"]. It's like that everywhere - as soon as the darkies start to come, that's it, the restaurant dies. Of course I try to fight it - I don't let them in, I tell them that the tables are occupied or reserved, there's no table for you here, but you can't control everything, they still get in. And then normal Russian people come up to you and say, 'What sort of a zoo are you running here?' They also feel uncomfortable when something like that is sitting at the table next to them, they just want to come have dinner at a place with their own people, without these darkies. But what can you do, in these times of crisis things have become very difficult, who comes to restaurants these days? Just the darkies, no one else has any money. Just watch how restaurants go bad before your very eyes, and the same thing happens with clubs. One must strictly maintain the proper ratio - you can let them in sometimes, but not too many, so that they don't ruin the look of the place."

Alexei notices the hookah attendant walking by and calls him over. "By the way, we have excellent hookahs - the best in the city. Try the apple-flavored one, people say they come back to try it again."

Russian world

2009-10-10T11:07:00.000+01:00

CIMG6491, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

On the occasion of Russian-language advocacy organization Russkiy Mir (not this one) opening an office in Tiraspol, I decided to translate this commentary from an Ekho Moskvy blog about the role of Russian in the post-Soviet space:

Every day, there's some new story about the misfortunes of the Russian language in the former Soviet republics. Here are just three recent examples.

Kazakhstan: starting in 2012, all movies will be required to be shown in the state language [Kazakh].

Tajikistan: now all official paperwork, correspondence and education must be conducted in Tajik. All citizens are required to know the state language - Tajik.

And finally, Ukraine: Yulia Tymoshenko has signed government order #1033, which requires all public-school teachers to speak only Ukrainian during work hours - including during breaks. Even in the school cafeteria.

How can all of this be assessed by someone who lives in Russia, speaks Russian and loves their language? Of course, such a person should feel pain, bitterness and disappointment - basically, a whole range of negative feelings. After all, we're talking about the language of Pushkin and Dostoevsky! After all, this is the language which we all used to speak together and in which we all seemed to understand each other wonderfully! The language of peace and friendship!... And so on and so forth.

I love my language. That's what I could say. But I won't. Because I perfectly understand that there's no way to separate a language from politics. Whether we like it or not, in the newly proclaimed states the Russian language is the most immediate (and daily!) reminder of the former empire. And attempts to preserve or promote it are judged as attempts to return the former state of relations - between the imperial center and the colonies.

The arguments of the now-independent states say the following: We have our own language, and this language should have an indisputable priority; anyone who wants to be a citizen of our country should first learn the national language, and all other languages are secondary. Do you have anything to say against this? I don't. Because this is exactly how Russia acts in relation to its own state language. And Russia is absolutely right!

But why does it deny others the same right? Just because "we used to be together"? That's why I won't say "how horrible" about the linguistic innovations of the former republics.

The real question is, what should Russia do about this - fight the situation or make peace with it? I have an answer, but I doubt you'll like it. We should make peace with it, I'd say. Fighting it is not only useless, it's dangerous, because all it does is generate increased aggression and firm opposition to the phrase "Russian language."

So, we need to accept the situation. And work out a new language policy. A NEW policy! One that will be, excuse the pun, free from politics. People shouldn't be afraid of Russian. They should love it. And love and fear do not go together.

Sukhumi's Semi-abandoned Station

2009-09-15T23:09:00.000+01:00

IMG_3014, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

The train station in Sukhumi is freighted with the historical memory of Stalinist architecture and the bitterness of failed post-Soviet conflict-resolution efforts. The railroad from Adler, in Russia, hasn't run through to Georgia since the war in the early 1990s. However, the possibility of restoring rail service was discussed in the final years of Shevardnadze's presidency as a potential confidence-building measure which would have had the added benefit of restoring a Russian rail link to Armenia.

Blogger cyxymu posted some thoughts and photos about the railway running through Abkhazia in 2007. By 2008, Russia's deployment of railway troops to the region with the stated goal of restoring the lines was seen as a prelude to last August's Five-Day War. And this year, Georgia condemned the transfer of control of the railway to Russia as "robbery."

When I was in Sukhumi earlier this year, I took the long walk from downtown to the train station and took some photos (below); and posting them gave me an excuse to translate the Bol'shoi Gorod article below, which I first noticed when I was a devotee of the publication back when I lived in Moscow and it used to be the city's free weekly.

Moscow-Sukhum, Car #26
October 11, 2004
Bol'shoi Gorod, № 32 (116)

This is the train from the TV. The train was running along the seacoast as the Channel One newsreader explained that this was the first Moscow-Sukhum (as the Abkhaz call their capital, notwithstanding that it's "Sukhumi" in Georgian) passenger train in 11 years and even called it a "window to Europe." A week later, because of this "window," two presidents - ours and Georgia's - quarrelled at the meeting of CIS heads of state. Saakashvili didn't like that Russia was establishing contacts with unrecognized Abkhazia, but Putin responded by saying that railroads are a business, and the government wouldn't interfere. The presidents agreed to disagree, and we got to ride the Moscow-Sukhum train, which departs from the Kursk Station once every two days.

Upon closer inspection, the train turns out to be two passenger cars hooked onto the train to Adler - an economy-class [плацкартный] car and a sleeper car, numbered 25 and 26. In Rostov-on-Don they latched on another two cars, bot those turned out to be practically empty. Just as it should be on a train to a resort area at the end of the season. But the train cars headed to Sukhum from Moscow were crowded: the economy-class one was completely full, and the sleeper car was more than half full. At the border all of these carriages were hooked up to a locomotive, and then it finally became a train.

Later on, one of the conductors told us that, when they ran it for the TV cameras, the train had one more carriage, a fifth one, beautiful and modern. It carried the head of Russian Railways Gennadii Fadeev, his entourage and the journalists. Wine and vodka flowed like rivers. Afterwards, articles appeared with headlines like "Five Carriages into the Future," "The Road of Life" and "Train of Hope."

That carriage was then removed to the depot in Moscow. In the remaining carriages were light fixtures which turned on and off on their own, doors with handles falling off, stuck windows and restrooms with rusting toilets. There was no toilet paper, but there were purple soap remnants.

It was mostly Russians in the sleeper car. I shared a compartment with a retired colonel named Nikolai Leonidovich. In the next compartment over were a young couple and a stern old man, also military. After them were some quiet old folks, and after them were three Abkhaz guys. They were transporting a large, black Sony television. "We get TVs [in Abkhazia] shipped in from Turkey, but they're low-quality ones," one of them explains.

"You should write about the TV set," I get instructed by Andrei, the half-drunk guy who is riding with his wife and the old officer in the compartment next to mine. "About how three Abkhazians are hauling a huge black television from Moscow." The guys from Sukhum learned from the TV that there is now a train on which they could take a TV home. The train was in the TV; now a TV is in the train.

Andrei has round, unshaven cheeks, which make his good-natured visage resemble a pear. Under his white T-shirt, he already has a ponderous belly. Andrei was lured to Abkhazia by the schoolbook map of the USSR's climatic zones. On that map, the subtropics crawled north in a narrow band along the Black Sea coast right up to Sukhumi. Andrei is hoping to prolong his summer by 10 days. Andrei's wife Alla has a specific task to accomplish on this trip - to conceive a child. They've got it all planned out - down to the fact that the place they're staying in Pitsunda is well-guarded, because it belongs to President Ardzinba's son.

My compartment-mate Nikolai Leonidovich had also gone to Abkhazia to make a baby. And he had made one - a son, 17 years ago. At the time he had been serving at the nuclear test grounds on Novaia Zemlia. The summer there lasted a month. But the salary was 1,000 rubles a month [huge by Soviet standards], and he got free package vacation tours. Nikolai Leonidovich still goes to the Moscow Military District resort [in Sukhum]. Basically, this means a vacation on a military base. Even Tengiz Kitovani's paramilitaries couldn't capture the two military resorts.

The train got its first police inspection near Rostov; it's second, in Lazarevskoe. The officers looked at everyone's passports and asked people about the purpose of their trip, both times carefully studying the large, black television. Between Adler and the Vesioloe, on the border, the conductor collected all of the passengers' passports, explaining that they had to be checked in the computer.

The customs guy made us turn all our bags inside out. The passengers, who had already been without their passports for a half hour, were visibly nervous. If you wind up without your passport in Abkhazia, there's no way to get back into Russia other than using mountain paths - there is neither a Russian consulate nor a Russian embassy in the unrecognized republic, even though 80% of the residents are Russian citizens. After the customs guy, a border guard passed through the carriage, returning passports. Apparently to everyone.

We passed over the border, the bridge across the River Psou. From the train windows, we could see the entire journey that people have to make when traveling into Abkhazia not on the train: a long, cement road with border and customs posts, two on each side. Lots of people were hauling large packages of goods. During tangerine season, the border turns into a madhouse. I imagined my carriage-mates stuck in a crowd of Abkhaz peasants with their large, black television.

After the landscape of Sochi, which in recent years has started to look like a suburban Moscow cottage subdivision, Abkhazia rewinds time by 15 years. But there's definitely a screw loose in the time machine. The Stalin Empire architecture of the Soviet resorts, familiar from childhood, gapes with broken windowpanes. Late-Soviet-era high-rise apartment buildings with "improved floor plans" stand half-destroyed. The upper floors are burned out, but people still live on the lower floors. The private room-rental business is bouncing back bit by bit, but there are still plenty of gutted single-family homes. Vacationers are concentrated in the few resorts which more or less survived the war, or else they rent rooms from people they knew from before the war. When the train arrived, all the arriving passengers were met by people with cars. I remained alone on the platform.

As the train from the TV made its way through Abkhazia, people came out of their homes and waved at us. The local cows, which have grown somewhat wild after 11 years, are also not used to the railroad - I was told they frequently wander onto the tracks and get run over.

My photos of the station from May of this year:

IMG_3100, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

Taxi stand.

IMG_3001, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2974, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Stray dogs on the track-facing side of the station.

IMG_2959, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2920, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Someone has poached the Soviet coat of arms from this locomotive.

IMG_2943, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2930, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2933, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2926, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

IMG_2922, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Signaling equipment, branded "Svetofor" ("Stoplight") and date-stamped with years in the 1950s and 1960s.

IMG_2989, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
The refurbished and functional part of the station.

IMG_2992, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Arrivals board.

IMG_3056, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Kiosk advertising beer, with a sign proclaiming that it's "open" - I didn't knock to check.

IMG_3055, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Abandoned kiosk advertising "Hot and cold beverages"; "Coffee
Cocoa Tea Juices Water Cocktails"; and "Soft-serve Ice-cream".

Divided by a common language?*

2009-09-10T15:25:00.001+01:00

CIMG1630, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Limba Noastra decorations in Chisinau last year.
This poster says "Our Language - Romanian," whereas I saw other,
similar posters elsewhere in the city that left off the word "Romanian."

On August 31st (yes, I've been busy IRL** and the timeliness of this post has suffered), Moldova celebrated a holiday called Limba Noastra ("Our Language"), which celebrates the Romanian language (notwithstanding the Voronin government's preference for calling the local dialect a separate "Moldovan" language) and country's transition to the use of the Latin alphabet at the end of the Soviet era.

IMG_7689, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Signage in Floresti, Moldova, Aug. 2008
Moldovans of my in-laws' generation sometimes still accidentally sprinkle in Cyrillic letters...

The holiday occasioned a lot of interesting online commentary. Imedia offered a straight-news report. Morning in Moldova characteristically takes a somewhat strident tone in defense of more robust promotion of Romanian language usage in Moldova, in a post which occasioned a pretty interesting comment. Nicu Popescu posted (in Romanian) an interesting historical survey of Russification efforts which shows that Romanian language usage in Moldova has actually survived much harder times than the past eight years of PCRM rule, and expressed the pragmatic and in my view absolutely correct point of view that people should not get hung up on what to call the language. Louis O'Neill, writing for RFE/RL, discusses the language issue in light of the mini-scandal which erupted after Voronin's apparent outburst (delivered in Russian) in Filat's direction at last Friday's opening session of parliament.

Natalia Morari also covered the language issue in one of her columns for RFE/RL last month (they are being translated into English - from Russian - but unfortunately RFE/RL doesn't seem to have a way to aggregate all the translations of her posts on one page), exploring the situation of the children of Russian-speakers in Chisinau (or, more precisely, the situation faced by Russian-speaking parents of children in Chisinau). And finally, award-winning and sometimes controversial Moldovan blogger Soacra Mica shared her personal experiences with the country's bilingualism.

As for my own experiences in the ten years I've been traveling to Moldova, I can say that I've always felt comfortable using Russian in Chisinau, although I've been glad not to have to in recent years, having picked up Romanian (or Moldovan, whatever) over time. For the most part, I find that people in the Moldovan capital tend to be fairly laid-back about which of the two languages is used in their day-to-day interactions, which is something I have always admired - it means that, if you only know Russian, you don't have to worry that you are creating political offense every time you open your mouth. It's something of a problem, of course, for the many citizens who end up using both languages passably but neither of them correctly, but I am not much moved by arguments based on linguistic purism.

In any event, the penetration of Russian seems to be slowly waning - as far as I know, none of the deputies use it in parliament anymore (though this was the case a few years ago, and it's still common to see political figures give interviews in Russian), and there is now a generation of young adults which has grown up able to avoid using Russian entirely. As the photos posted below show, though, there is plenty of usage of Russian in the public space, especially in Chisinau.

Even when people can't agree to speak the same language, sometimes they can still have a conversation. Last year I had lunch in Chisinau with a politically active Moldovan who spoke Romanian to the waitress taking care of our table. She spoke Russian to him. They had a conversation about the menu, about what would be tasty that day, etc., and each understood the other but did not speak the other's language. Of course such situations have the potential to be a bit tense, but I think there is something positive - or at least not entirely negative - about the mutual acceptance.

Earlier this year, I attended a peaceful gathering with speakers by (then-)opposition politicians on Chisinau's main square, just a few days after the violence of April 7th. Of all the speakers, Andrei Popov, who is now in parliament with the PDM but at the time was working as the director of a think-tank in Chisinau, made the strongest impression on me when he gave some remarks in Russian about how the Communists were cheating all Moldovan citizens - Russian-speakers included - out of a democratic government.

Also earlier this year, I was talking with an Estonian who works in Chisinau about the country's bilingualism. I mentioned that it was an unusual situation of a country that is really bilingual. The conversation took an unexpected turn when my interlocutor agreed and pronounced the situation in Moldova "disgusting," expressing his relief that the Baltic republics had avoided a similar situation and that Moldova would be less confused politically and better off in general if it had somehow moved away from widespread use of Russian being acceptable. It's a not-uncommon point of view that I understand but can't agree with.

CIMG3202, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Bilingual signage can be seen in all walks of Moldovan life. This is a sign listing prices for having
various prayers said or ceremonies performed at the monastery in Saharna in northeastern Moldova.

IMG_3948, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
A bilingual welcome to one of Chisinau's main athletic venues.

CIMG3335, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
A trilingual and very shady ad seeking "girls with fashion/swimwear body" in Chisinau.

CIMG6510-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Fast food at the Central Market in Chisinau.

CIMG6495-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Parking lot and mechanic services.

CIMG6491-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Bilingualism beyond the grave - this sign advertises custom-made gravestones.

* There are actually two main "linguistic" divides in Moldova (notwithstanding that they persist in large part because of various political forces capitalizing on and exacerbating them, they do seem to be real), only one of which involves a common language: the division between people who self-identify as "Romanian" and the subgroup of people among those who self-identify as "Moldovan" who believe the language they speak should be called "Moldovan." The other linguistic divide in the country, of course, is between Romanian-(or Moldovan-)speakers and Russian-speakers.

** in real life...

Moldovan Independence Day

2009-08-27T18:27:00.001+01:00

In my Facebook feed, I saw a witty observation flash by today - "Moldova has always been independent - nothing ever depended on it." Nicu Popescu had a very interesting post today, which I'd translate if I had time, about the Moldovan mentality of dependence (he developed the theme further in this interview).

But I'm going to use the day as an excuse to post some of my photos from last year's celebration of the holiday. A year ago today, I got up well before 9am, quite a feat on a holiday for someone who had just been a student for three years, and made it down to Chisinau's main square to watch the ceremony of flower-laying at the statue of Ştefan cel Mare.

I have no idea how the festivities went down today (actually, with the exception of Lupu's absence, it looks like a familiar scene - Zina shi Vologhea u Shtefana), but I'd imagine there is a more tense atmosphere this year, as tomorrow marks the first meeting of parliament after the July 29th repeat elections. The current government ministers will tender their resignations, and the no-longer-opposition will be able to form a new government (though it lacks the 61 votes required in Parliament to choose a new President).

According to the excellent Morning in Moldova blog, it is absolutely imperative that a speaker of parliament be elected tomorrow. Imedia reports (on their excellent and extremely useful new English-language blog) that the members of the Alliance for European Integration, recently formed from the four opposition parties that made it into parliament on July 29, may not quite be done haggling over who gets the spot. Of greater concern is the fact that the Communist Party this week stated that it will not negotiate with the Alliance as a whole, but would be happy to negotiate with the individual parties that make up the Alliance, suggesting that the horse-trading over who becomes the country's next President (and of course the side deals that may be necessary to arrive at a compromise on that central issue) may just be heating up.

Anyway, I prefer to think back to a happier time - last year, when I was still enveloped in post-bar-exam bliss, and April 7th was just another insignificant date like any other...

IMG_7941-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
PM Zinaida Greceanii, President Vladimir Voronin and then-Speaker of Parliament
Marian Lupu, accompanied by the Patriarch - separation of church and state is so
overrated - approach the Stefan statue, preceded by goose-stepping soldiers...

IMG_7965-2, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
...proceed past the assembled press corps...

IMG_7952, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
...and prepare for the flower-laying.

IMG_7979, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Meanwhile, lesser lights await their turn to lay flowers of their own, and
the bigwigs' chariots stand ready, lined up with military precision.

IMG_8002-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Who will get that license plate next?

IMG_8016, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Even here, some ~~jackass~~ opinionated individual showed up with one of those pro-unification t-shirts.
A bit like showing up to a 4th of July celebration with a t-shirt claiming the US in George III's name.
Well, not really, but I couldn't think of a better analogy.

IMG_8010, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

And the band played on...

IMG_8039, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Celebratory flags outside Chisinau's City Hall.

IMG_8036, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Beer tents set up in anticipation of a concert planned for that evening.

IMG_8022, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
At the time, I wondered if the arrows on the sign at right symbolized
Moldova's unfortunately non-straightforward road toward Europe.

IMG_8021, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
The holiday was known as Independence Day for years (still is, officially and colloquially).
Therefore, when I saw the signs on the stage on PMAN proclaiming it Republic Day, I
immediately recalled how for many years June 12th in Russia was celebrated as
Independence Day (though not without some bemused wondering about "who did
we become independent from, anyway?") but under Putin became known as the more
bombastic Russia Day. "Further evidence of Putinism in Moldova?" I wondered lazily.

IMG_8029, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

Signs and Symbols in Abkhazia

2009-08-26T20:02:00.000+01:00

People more knowledgeable about the situation than I have posited that on August 26, 2008, when Russia recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Abkhazia exchanged the de facto independence it had enjoyed until then for the security which it hadn't.

It remains to be seen how the project of Abkhazian independence will withstand Russia's warm embrace - here is an excerpt from a very worthwhile piece by a local journalist who has been observing and writing about the situation there for years:

In relation to the main enemy, Georgia, even an ordinary Abkhaz farmer understood very well what was in Abkhaz interests and what was not, as these interests had cost the lives of several thousand Abkhaz during their 1992-93 war with Georgia. But how to organise its relations with Russia, at present its only ally - this not even the Abkhaz political elite itself knows.

The Abkhaz have no wish to quarrel with their mighty neighbour: Russia is not just their only window on the world and guarantor of protection from Georgia, but also the source of financial prosperity. Direct subsidies from Moscow make up more than half the Abkhaz budget and trade with Russia is 95% of the country's commercial traffic. Holidaymakers at Abkhaz resorts (the most important segment of the economy) are almost exclusively Russian and practically all foreign investments are also Russian. On top of this most people have dual Abkhaz-Russian citizenship, which allows them to travel the world. Local pensioners receive a Russian pension, which is 10 times greater than the Abkhaz pension. Such close relations make it difficult to preserve the national interest, that is sovereignty and national identity, but Abkhaz society is not prepared to sacrifice its sovereignty just to please Moscow - it is too hard won. South Ossetia regards independence as a transitional stage to eventually becoming part of Russia, but Abkhazia has no such plans.

The anniversary today has occasioned a predictable avalanche (relatively speaking - and especially relative to the situation which existed in the Western press before August 2008, when Abkhazia was hardly discussed at all) of commentary about whether recognition has turned out to be good or bad for Russia, Georgia, the international order, and the territories themselves. I'm not going to try to make this post into a link roundup, as I assume those interested in the topic are as adroit with Google News as I am; this piece pretty much sums up the arguments in favor of the proposition that Russia made a mistake; opendemocracy has had a tremendous amount of readable coverage in recent weeks as well.

I wanted to use the anniversary as an excuse to post the second installment of photos from my May trip to Abkhazia (the first is here; and all of my photos from the trip are here), which is sort of a hodgepodge of various posters and signs. They are in no particular order, although I've tried to provide translations, as well as explanations of their significance or kitsch value (where not self-explanatory), in the captions.

CIMG2987-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Abkhazia and Russia - Always Together!" - through a cracked windshield.

IMG_1804, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Billboard exhorting local residents to "Clean up our city!"
by participating in a subbotnik - near Pitsunda

IMG_2747, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Office of the Congress of Russian Communities and Compatriots of Russia in Abkhazia.
This organization, then known as the Congress of Russian Communities (or KRO) played a major
role in procuring Russian passports for over 100,000 residents of Abkhazia in 2002. I interviewed the
organization's director and learned some interesting things about the process. The "and Compatriots
of Russia" part was added to the name as the organization wanted to seem more inclusive of the
ethnic Armenians and Abkhaz, many of whom it likewise helped to obtain Russian passports.

CIMG2859, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Beer bar, near the compound which was formerly a resort for military personnel
and served for years as the headquarters of Russia's "peacekeeping" forces in Abkhazia.

IMG_2639, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"No smoking" - in one of the local government buildings.

IMG_3053, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
At the semi-abandoned Sukhumi train station.

IMG_2761, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Sign on a boarded-up metal kiosk advertising ice cream, coffee, juices and khachapuri.

IMG_2714, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Ancient street sign - after I took this picture, one of the guys playing dominoes nearby
told me that there is a problem with antique hounds stealing street signs like these and
then selling them in Russia. This one marked the Street of the Third International.

IMG_2727, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Sign (in Abkhaz and Russian) indicating the location of a
repair shop for refrigerators and washing machines.

IMG_2339, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Photos for new passports and documents."

IMG_2280, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Sign advertising hi-tech services services: loading songs and photos onto mobile phones, printing
digital pictures from phones and cameras, and burning CDs and DVDs - inside a used bookstore.

IMG_2230, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Various advertisements for photo printing, disc burning, fireworks displays, as well
as some local flavor - a DVD chronicle of the 1992-93 war, and the small sign
advertises tapes of "funeral music in Abkhazian, Armenian, Greek or Russian."

IMG_2226, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Stained-glass sign of a hand holding books, marking a library.

IMG_2229, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Prices for long-distance phone calls.

IMG_2199, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Cold drinks / Beer / Ice cream / Juices" - outside a winery.

IMG_1944, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Various tourist services and restaurants, at Lake Ritsa.

CIMG2750, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
A Soviet relic - the "Peace to the World" (Миру - Мир!) painted on a bridge near the border with Russia.

IMG_1628, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Gagra is our city"

IMG_2120, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
War memorial, in the lobby from which tourists enter the caves at New Athos.

IMG_2096, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Sign exhorting residents of Abkhazia to participate in the 2007 Russian Duma elections,
now enjoying a second life as a tarp, near the Novy Afon / New Athos monastery.

CIMG2858, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Lovely Lenin mosaic on the territory of the Russian peacekeepers' HQ.
I was there to interview the Russian ambassador, who had just been appointed.

IMG_1647, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Road sign reminding drivers not to blind oncoming traffic (thanks to EB for tipping me off to this one).

IMG_2805, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Salesperson's Commandments" - hanging in a grocery store.

IMG_2777, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Vladimir Il'ich Lenin Park"

IMG_1769, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Signs pointing the way to tourist activities on the embankment in Pitsunda.

CIMG2845, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Information"

IMG_2427, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Bus shelter at the old Sukhumpribor factory, a building which now appears to house an indoor market.

IMG_2440, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Shoe repair"

IMG_2442, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Clothing repair"

Happy 421st birthday!

2009-08-25T22:23:00.003+01:00

This year, my wife's hometown of Floreşti celebrated its birthday (last weekend) without us. Incidentally, unless there's a local trend with which I'm unfamiliar (which is not impossible, since I'm not exactly plugged in with the youth subcultures there), someone has pranked Wikipedia by adding a sentence to the entry about Floreşti - "Since 2009 Floreşti has become the most popular producer of Moldova's Hip-Hop and Rap industry."

Be that as it may, a phone call last weekend reminded me of how much fun last year's "City Day" celebrations were, and I decided to share a few of the photos from way back when (the whole photoset is here, including some photos of the two nights of concerts on the main square - on one of which the city was honored with the presence of one Fuego, an artist previously unknown to me who is apparently a Romanian pop star):

CIMG1244, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Flyer showing the schedule of festivities, alongside information
about payment rules at the local telephone exchange.

IMG_7380, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Bulletin board with the heading "Floreşti - Past, Present, Future"...

IMG_7425, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
...and several representatives of Floreşti's future.

IMG_7284, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Celebratory assembly at the local House of Culture, which included speeches by
local luminaries and children reading some genuinely touching poems they had
written about their hometown - as well as an older woman who had witnessed and
survived deportation by the Soviets and read a tear-jerker of a poem about that ordeal.

IMG_7541, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
"Together we will succeed!"

IMG_7575, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Small child with a toy gun on the main square.

CIMG1416, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
My in-laws' cellar.

18 years ago...

2009-08-25T21:48:00.001+01:00

[image source - a personal memoir from someone who was there]

[image source - a great series of photos from 1991]

Last week, Snob.ru asked its community of readers and "global Russians" whether they remember August 21, 1991, the date when the GKChP and bit the dust - and with it, any chance that the USSR could be preserved. For those unfamiliar with the acronym, it stood for "State Committee on the State of Emergency," the group of people behind the attempted putsch which - much too late - aimed to derail Gorbachev's reform (or liberation, or running into the ground, if you prefer) of the Soviet Union.

[image source]
Boris Yeltsin at the barricades with his bodyguard Aleksandr Korzhakov,
whose apparent role in ruling the country (at least according to his tell-all
memoir) made him infamous during the '90s as a symbol of poor governance

The comments are pretty emotional and talk about the various stages of people's feelings about Russia's post-Soviet experiment:

Naive but wonderful feelings of unity - "A couple of times during the night [of 20-21 Aug.] I had a completely incredible feeling, as trite as it sounds, but a feeling of unity with my people [с моим народом], with all of the people [со всеми людьми] who had gathered there for whatever reason. It was a physical feeling of brotherhood, which I have never felt since. By 1993 it became clear that in 1991 we had been total idiots. What remained was an unpleasant aftertaste and those feelings, and it's not clear what to do with them. They have been lost for nothing. And it's a pity."

Later disappointment - "Everyone had incredible - and naive, as it later turned out - hopes...... Who could have known then that the nomenklatura (in epaulets and otherwise) would - having repainted itself - steadily come crawling back, once again grabbing up everything for itself, although now in the role of 'state capitalists'."

Dashed hopes - "Those were days when the hope appeared that there would be real democracy in [our] country. However, that hope rather quickly died a quiet death....I remember that since then I have never seen so many normal, human faces in one place. The first sign that nothing would really change was when they allowed the Communist Party to continue. First they banned it, and then they authorized it on the sly - that little fact left a feeling of extreme disgust. And didn't leave any hope for a better future."

Postcard of SVO as it looked in the late-Soviet era.

And one of Snob's readers had an interesting story which I've translated:

It was one of the most powerful impressions of my life!... At the time, I was working as a line customs inspector at Sheremetyevo-2. In those days, all of the flights with people leaving to live in Israel departed early in the morning (around 5am), so that arriving foreigners would not be discomfited by this picture of thousands of people emigrating. Naturally, all of the people leaving would show up at the airport the night before, and all night the departure halls were noisy, people would hold farewell parties for their departing friends and relatives; some laughed, some cried...

On the night of August 21, the departure halls were DEAD QUIET! And thousands of absolutely white faces, raised up to the monitors which had been set up in the airport, on which a single question was frozen - WILL THEY LET US OUT OR NOT? It was a frightening picture, burned into my memory...

The GKChP plotters and their not-so-bad fates (not counting Boris Pugo, who shot himself), 15 years later, as reported by AiF in 2006:

[image source]

More: Reports on the GKChP anniversary from 2004 and 2006.
Paul Goble's impressions of Russians' historical memory of August '91.

"A Soviet Fly in Geopolitical Amber"

2009-08-25T20:58:00.003+01:00

[image source]

Strange Maps provides a dandy headline phrase describing Transnistria, as well as an detailed map of the region. I have a similarly fascinating poster-sized map of Moldova with various demographic breakdowns and migration statistics, but unfortunately I have no way to scan in such a big piece of paper.

Here's a recent update on the prospects for conflict resolution (if you can get past the tired phrases like "it could be a museum of the Soviet Union"), and here's a great resource if you are looking for further reading on the subject - three volumes of essays on the conflict which were presented at a conference that I attended in late May.

Here are some photos of Tiraspol, Transnistria's capital, from my most recent trip there on June 18 of this year:

CIMG3392, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
HQ of the local youth organization, Proryv (Breakthrough).

CIMG3391, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Billboard of Russian President Medvedev and Transnistrian leader
Igor Smirnov - the banner at left reads "Our strength is in unity with Russia!"

CIMG3385, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Decidedly old-school advertising posters outside of the Officers' Club,
which now rents some of its space to other organizations - unfortunately
I wasn't able to photograph the incredible, museum-like display of portraits
of historical Russian military figures which adorns one of the large rooms inside.

CIMG3381, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Inside the HQ of the Transnistrian Communist Party (not a huge vote-getter, but - according to the party's leader - a
genuine opposition party, although according to others I spoke with if they threaten the authorities too much then they
might face a mud-slinging campaign based on their earlier contacts with the Moldovan Communist Party)

CIMG3378-1, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Recruiting poster for the Felix Dzerzhinsky (!) boarding school for cadets, which prepares 5th- to 9th-graders
for a career in the local police or internal troops - the appeal is to "Duty, Honor, Fatherland" - MacArthuresque!

The Caucasus in 1842

2009-08-17T17:07:00.001+01:00

Caucasus1842, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

This is the latest in an ongoing series of Caucasus maps (note that some other maps will probably also be caught by the "Maps" label, but most are from this endlessly interesting part of the world).

Abkhazia in pictures

2009-08-15T08:38:00.000+01:00

IMG_2242, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Burned-out Soviet-era government building, Sukhumi.

IMG_1776, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Early-season holidaymakers on the beach in Pitsunda.

IMG_1862, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Along the road to Lake Ritsa.

CIMG2802, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Russian Theater in Sukhumi.

IMG_2719, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Locals throwing dominoes in Sukhumi.
I have never seen as many abacuses as I saw there.

IMG_1650, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Traffic jam on Abkhazia's main road.

IMG_2455, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Resting in the shade, Sukhumi.

IMG_2315, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
This woman saw a Russian-speaker taking pictures of her modest street-vending operation and
immediately commenced to smoothing out and straightening the posters she had on sale of
Russian leaders - she tidied up VVP first and then moved on to the coquettish portrait of Medvedev.

All pictures from May 16-22, 2009.
Full set of pictures from Abkhazia is here.

A year after

2009-08-06T16:35:00.000+01:00

Bookstore in Sukhumi, May 2009
IMG_2297, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

A friend of mine told me the other day that I should write something about the anniversary of the war in Georgia.What she meant was that I should write something serious, for publication somewhere other than here. But although, to quote a fellow Russia-blogger who has just launched a new project, "the bar for knowing what you’re talking about has been set criminally low" - especially when it comes to Georgia - I don't feel enough interest or certainty about things one way or the other or possess any particular inside information or insight which might inspire such an effort. All of the rumblings of impending war may just remain rumblings, as they have more often than not in the past, on the other hand it is August so who knows what might happen.

I did, however, want to call attention to a few recent items which appeared elsewhere. First, Ivan Krastev's account of the conflict's "profound impact on the post-Soviet space, the United States, the European Union, even China and Turkey." Second, this RIA Novosti story about claims being filed against Georgia by over 2,500 South Ossetians in international legal fora, which sparked an interesting discussion when I posted it on facebook.

Finally, the latest commentary from the always insightful Sergei Markedonov (the original in Vedomosti is here - the translation, as far as I know, appeared only in the JRL email so I can't link to it and must post the full text here). He gets everything right as far as I can tell, from the long-time indifference of the West as a factor in the protracted nature of the so-called "frozen conflicts" to the observation that "international law is a fiction, something like the social theoretizations of Marx and Lenin. Back in the Soviet Union, it was possible to prove absolutely anything, even mutually exclusive postulates, and find adequate quotations in the works of the classics to corroborate it."

Vedomosti, August 6, 2009
AUGUST 2008 - AUGUST 2009: RESULTS OF FIVE DAY WAR
The post-WWII world order is in shambles
Author: Sergei Markedonov (Chief of the Department of Ethnic Problems, Center for Political and Military Analysis)
WORLD POWERS SHOULD POOL EFFORTS AND COME UP WITH A NEW WORLD ORDER

The Georgian-Ossetian latent conflict erupted in the Five Day War in August 2008. It became the third armed clash between Georgia and South Ossetia in 17 years. Its consequences, however, put this round of hostilities in a different league from the previous clashes.

The international community never took notice of ethnic conflicts in Eurasia before 2008. Both the United States and Europe regarded them as latent and forgotten. The Five Day War put the post-Soviet zone in the focus of international attention for the first time since disintegration of the USSR. The UN Security Council discussed the situation in South Ossetia on three (!) occasions within the first twenty-four hours of the conflict. All this interest in the Caucasus and its problems is easily understandable. Development of the new status quo in the post-Soviet zone began precisely in the Caucasus. Two conflicts in Eurasia out of four turned out to be anything but latent. Old peacekeeping operations and agreements fixing the outcome of the hostilities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the early 1990s became history.

To begin with, these developments in the southern part of the Caucasus became the first violations of the so called Byelovezhskaya Puscha concept. It stipulated that the borders existing between the former republics of the Soviet Union would be borders of the new sovereign states. Recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia set a precedent of revision of the borders within the Commonwealth. Emulating what Washington and Brussels did with Kosovo, Moscow may talk of how unique the situation with the former Georgian autonomies is until it is blue in its collective face. It will change nothing. August 2008 set a precedent of successful ethnic self-determination based on military might rather than on a compromise. That all involved and interested parties will seriously ponder it (are pondering, actually) goes without saying. No use arguing whether or not the Russian president was correct to swiftly respond to appeals from both houses of the Federal Assembly. Once a tough and unpopular decision is made (and this decision is unpopular because not even Russia's CIS allies backed it), a sovereign state is stuck with it. It cannot be unmade without doing substantial damage, more substantial that what was already done.

The decision on August 26 was made in certain political circumstances that had been either absent before then or had been infinitesimal enough to be ignored.

Whatever else it was, the Five Day War became proof that the process of disintegration of the late USSR was far from over yet. Instead of becoming the end of history, formal collapse of the erstwhile state put into motion the process of development of sovereign states and a search for their political identities that resulted in armed conflicts, attempts to put them on hold, and finally in their reactivation.

Secondly, the events in South Ossetia demonstrated apparent and utter ineffectiveness of legitimate international arbitration. Instead of interceding to make peace, world powers split into two factions, each with a favorite of its own. The United States with allies backed "territorial integrity" of Georgia despite brutality of Tbilisi's efforts to restore it. Russia in its turn abandoned is status of a peacekeeper in favor of that of a military- political patron of the former Georgian autonomies. Each faction meanwhile attached more importance to unilateral actions than to the existing international law.

It is possible for the existing centers of power these days to recognize political units as sovereign states or deny them this recognition regardless of the accepted legitimate criteria. Some UN states including three permanent members of the UN Security Council recognized the former Serbian autonomy as a sovereign state in February 2008. Permanent member of the UN Security Council and Atomic Club, Russia recognized sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008. In the meantime, Russia flatly refuses to recognize Kosovo while the United States and its EU allies keep signing hosannah to the Georgian territorial integrity. In a word, common rules, standards, and criteria no longer work. Political expediency is the only guideline. It did not begin yesterday, of course. Last year events became but another confirmation (in the post-Soviet zone, for a change) of the premise that the Yalta-Potsdam version of the international law is history and that nothing has been developed to replace it.

In August 2008, Russia proclaimed itself another center of power (the way Washington and Brussels had done six months earlier) prone to recognize as sovereign state what political unit it considered worthy of this status. The Five Day War delivered another blow at the already crumbling model of the world order established after WWII. The UN is functioning but nominally these days while both Washington and Moscow make endless references to international law. In reality, however, international law is a fiction, something like the social theoretizations of Marx and Lenin. Back in the Soviet Union, it was possible to prove absolutely anything, even mutually exclusive postulates, and find adequate quotations in the works of the classics to corroborate it.

World powers ought to work out a new world order now because the alternatives - the law of jungle and reliance on military might alone - do not bear consideration. That Russia is not alone to rely on firepower is cold comfort, really.

Navel-gazing

2009-08-04T21:57:00.002+01:00

This is the latest post in a highly infrequent series wherein I examine the contents of my server logs (yes, I know there are more important things I should be writing about...).

This time I will be brief and will simply say the following to the individual in Texas insistently searching for "ingredients in russian crepes teremok": what makes up the food of the gods is to be gratefully enjoyed but not to be known by us mere mortals. Please, do you really need to know? Isn't it likely that knowing would take away from the delight we experience while savoring a Teremok blin?

If you're worried about the nutritional value of the ingredients (and having perused the details, it's possible you should be - the mighty Ilya Muromets blin is over 1,000 calories!), check out this helpful chart. If you're trying to reverse-engineer Teremok blini and open up a stand in Texas (I confess I've had visions of exporting the blin-stand business model to the US), I suggest you propose a franchising arrangement - you can get in touch with the Teremok team through their customer forum. And you can read here about one of the visionary individuals who we all have to thank for the heavenly blini. Happily, I can confirm that Teremok appears to be going strong in spite of the crisis - I had the chance to enjoy one of my favorite outlets with friends (and, to be honest, a couple more times on my own) on recent trips to Moscow, and the place was packed.

Moldovan election observation - in London (2)

2009-07-29T21:02:00.000+01:00

Four years ago, I posted an account of Moldovans voting in Moscow; earlier this year, this space saw a rundown of the voting at the Moldovan Embassy in London on April 5th. As I watch the privesc.eu videostream from Moldovan Central Electoral Commission headquarters and marvel at the things they permit themselves to discuss when they think the mics are off (e.g., should the country properly be called "Moldova" or "Moldavia"), here are a few pics of Moldovans turning out to vote in London today:

For some reason, a cop car showed up and an officer went inside to discuss things
(presumably crowd control) with Embassy officials. This was around 8pm or so.

Apparently some people turned out with protest-type signs. And one of the
observers told me that an English-speaker had shown up and made a scene,
shouting about "don't let [an unspecified] THEM tell you what to do!"

Some comic relief - a sign designating the London consulate as "Voting Precinct #313,"
with the word "Voting" misspelled ("Voatare" as opposed to the correct "Votare").

The happy result - a "Voted" stamp in the passport identical to the one Lorina
got in Moscow in 2005, with an extra stamp indicating the date of these elections.

Moldova's repeat elections - the "Battle of the documentaries" and the online campaign

2009-07-29T15:41:00.002+01:00

"Бес-при-дел", originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 25, 2009.
The word scrawled on the concrete, which should actually be
spelled "беспредел," means "lawlessness" or "chaos" in Russian

An earlier post of mine provided a few places to go for good analysis and updates on today's elections in Moldova. Additional sites to check are ADEPT's website, alegeri.md (also in English and Russian) and the website of the Moldovan Central Election Commission (showing a fairly high turnout as of 3:45pm local time). Before I head out to the Moldovan Embassy way out in Chiswick to provide moral support to my better half as she votes, I thought I would take a trip down memory lane through the campaign that was, to provide some basic background for those who have not been following it - while trying not to get too bogged down in the minutiae - as well as add a bit of detail about how the campaign has spilled over into the interwebs. I saw the lead-up to the repeat election campaign, as I was in Moldova from late May through June 21, but I had to follow the past five weeks online.

Sadly, only today did I re-discover Morning in Moldova, a wonderful (and unusual) English-language blog about Moldova, which I had seen briefly in the frenzy of link-hopping I engaged in while trying to keep up with the events that followed the April elections. The coverage at MiM is worth reading; I especially liked this attempt to map out Moldova's political scene.

The repeat elections, of course, were made necessary by the inability of the parliament chosen in the April 5 elections to choose a president to succeed Vladimir Voronin, who is term-limited out and has become a creaky dinosaur holding his country - and perhaps even his own party - back. Voronin managed the nifty trick of being both acting president and speaker of parliament (a post he will try to retain - a la Putin, or to use Voronin's own analogy, Deng Xiaoping - depending on how well his Communist Party, the PCRM, does today). The major reason there was no compromise in parliament was extreme societal polarization and outrage - and somewhat unexpected unity - on the part of the three opposition parties who made it into the legislature in the wake of demonstrations on April 7th which turned violent.

Who is ultimately to blame for the violence remains something of a mystery, although looking at qui prodest it should be noted that the burning of parliament and the presidential building arguably played into the hands of ruling Communists, at least in the short term, allowing them to characterize the opposition as would-be putschists who had attempted to overthrow the government. (An interesting timeline of foreign reactions to the post-election violence can be found here.) April 7th turned out to be the birthdate of a lot of myths - both in Moldova and among journalists and social media evangelists who were quick to seize on the overblown notion that the unrest in Chisinau could be characterized as a "Twitter Revolution" (this post puts a similar meme in its place in the context of Iran).

In Moldova, much of the June-July campaign centered around narratives of the events of April 7th, and the key difference between the campaign that ended on April 5th and campaign one ending today turned out to be the defection from the PCRM of Marian Lupu, the former parliamentary speaker whose name had been on the lips of many Western Moldova-watchers in March and early April as the best possible option to succeed Voronin. Lupu's role is yet to be determined - some from the opposition think he is part of a Communist plot to draw centrist votes (one of Lupu's campaign slogans has been "The political war must be stopped") and that upon making it into parliament, assuming his party and the Communists have enough votes to elect the president, he will make a deal with the PCRM and the three opposition parties who made it in in April will remain marginalized (in fact, one of them, Serafim Urechean's AMN, may not make it into parliament at all this time around).

Trash your TV, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.
Chisinau, June 7, 2009

A major first salvo in the information battle which characterized Moldova's second election campaign was kicked off when the government aired a "documentary" titled "Attack on Moldova" (Atac Asupra Moldovei) on NIT. In the best traditions of Russian propaganda films of recent years, this one-sided narrative featured alleged recordings of phone conversations and hinted at shadowy threats from abroad as well as fingering internal enemies - namely, the leaders of the opposition parties as well as jailed (and later released) businessman Gabriel Stati. This masterpiece can be viewed on YouTube (naturally) here. It led to at least one opposition party leader threatening legal action. Moldovan analyst Oleg Cristal projected in June that the film would be the "quintessence of this campaign," and he wasn't far off the mark. As Cristal wrote in late June:

I understand that this film is currently being shown all over the country, and it aims to provoke a reaction that is both emotional (blood, fire, screaming, shooting, chanting, etc.) and sentimental (fear, personal and group security, hatred, patriotism, love of country, etc.): "we are being attacked by external enemies (Romania and transnational crime groups) and internal enemies (the liberal opposition)."... "Attack on Moldova" rallies society around a common threat: "We must defend our Fatherland," urges Voronin.

"Attack on Moldova" kicked off what one interesting commentary referred to as the "Battle of the documentaries." The opposition decided to present its own versions of the events of April 7th and get its message out by screening its own "documentaries," both on YouTube and in some cases by screening them in the country's smaller towns where many voters do not have access to internet (or fast enough internet) to enable them to watch these online, or would not be inclined to do so. The main examples of these films were "Black Box," "Whither Moldova?", "Who Loves Moldova?", and the party-sponsored "The Truth About April 7th" (PL), "Green Eyes" (PLDM - whose party color is green) and "In Defense of Moldova" (AMN - see JurnalTV's report on this film, with highlights, here). Later in the campaign, Romania's TVR1 aired yet another "documentary" (I use the scare quotes throughout because, while some of these films may be relatively more or less objective, none of them is really a documentary), "The Trap," about the events of April 7th (some discussion of the film is here). This untitled opposition film may also be of interest.

One could hardly call the "Battle of the documentaries" a battle of equals - the ruling party by all accounts made full use of its "administrative resource," including its ability to broadcast and rebroadcast its propaganda films on nationwide television. The national news programs are also used to cast opposition politicians in the worst possible light. While I was in Chisinau, I saw several days of intense coverage of the city's stray-dog problem, all of it concluding that the city's mayor, liberal Dorin Chirtoaca, was at fault. I knew I was going native when I out-conspiracy-theoried even my post-Soviet friends and theorized that the PCRM had perhaps imported stray dogs from the rest of the country to give their mud-slinging increased credibility. Then the nightly news started to highlight alleged rat infestation in Chisinau, alleging that "the 'most European mayor in the city's history' has brought Chisinau to the verge of an epidemic."

Progressive Moldovans have found ways to compete with or combat the government's domination of broadcast TV, but most of these are internet-based and therefore problematic in terms of reaching rural voters. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning the nascent online TV channel JurnalTV, as well as a streaming video site called privesc.eu ("I watch," in Romanian), launched during the campaign, which has increased transparency by showing complete video of press conferences and public meetings of, for example, the Electoral Commission (and is currently streaming Moldova's main opposition-oriented TV station, ProTV), rather than the carefully edited versions which appear on state-run TV.

Another way of using the internet to deal with biased broadcast media is to take on the most egregious excesses directly - by publishing monitoring reports highlighting the bias of state-run news programs or by showing side by side how careful editing is used by the state-run programs to distort the messages of opposition politicians or foreign critics. In general - not surprisingly - the authorities have found it harder to control online media (though not for lack of trying) than conventional media, but this is cold comfort to the opposition given the internet's relatively limited reach in Moldova.

Fighting Fist, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 16, 2009.
You might assume the writing says "Fight with Communism," but in fact it says "Fight with Romanism"

YouTube provides a wealth of clips for those interested in how the campaign unfolded. While the major parties had video clips available on their websites, they all also had their video materials aggregated on YouTube:

PCRM
Partidul Liberal (PL)
Dorin Chirtoaca (separate from PL)
AMN (under the username scottgeorges for some reason)
Lupu (showing inter alia what seem to be dozens of clips of his meetings with voters in various cities throughout Moldova)

PLDM couldn't get their party's acronym as a username because it had already been nailed down by a YouTube channel called "Peace! Love! Deathmetal!" I couldn't find a one-stop source for their ads, but luckily the good people at ADEPT have set up a YouTube channel with campaign ads from all parties.

Online and traditional media which support the authorities also have made use of YouTube channels:

Moldnews, an online news portal which resembles Russian-funded efforts in Georgia
TV channel NIT

As have opposition-minded individuals and media:

Change Moldova
Unimedia
JurnalTV

For a somewhat more light-hearted YouTube clip, check out this animated spoof showing Voronin and several others (Greceanii, Turcan, Lupu, Rosca) conspiring to burn down the parliament. In general, the atmosphere of "permanent campaign" seemed to lead to fatigue and some silliness. A well-respected group of young, opposition-minded (though some used to work in the current gov't) economists called Clubul Idea started a something of a parody of the elections on its website - people create their own parties and then have the chance to vote for them.

Lupu, Chirtoaca and PLDM's Vlad Filat are on Facebook (note that Lupu is the only one of those three who has not tricked out his profile with a customized URL); Urechean is not, which makes sense given his target demo. They have been using the internet fairly extensively in general and their Facebook feeds in particular, as has Voronin adviser / PCRM parliamentarian / "grey cardinal" Mark Tkachuk, whose feed has reliably contained some of the black PR that is being pumped out by the PCRM campaign. Tkachuk (also spelled Tcaciuc) went all VVP with an "online news conference" on news portal Omega. Omega's unintentionally funny (to those familiar with Anglosphere netspeak) URL, OMG.md, stands for "Objective Media Group." They seem to be taking a page from Fox News' self-proclaimed "Fair & Balanced" stance, as this is an overtly pro-PCRM site.

Lupu joined Facebook fairly late in the game and received some scorn early on for making the noobie mistake of posting many, many videos as individual status updates, thus flooding the home pages of his "friends" and leading some people to exclude his feed from their home page. Sorry, I said I wouldn't get bogged down in the minutiae... To Lupu's credit, he did hold a meeting with Moldovan bloggers, video of which of course made its way online (PL leader Mihai Ghimpu also had a well-documented "off-line" meeting with Moldovan bloggers, as did Urechean). Lupu also, tellingly, has a standalone website (i.e., not one associated with the party he is using as a vehicle for his campaign, PDM) and has put a bunch of photos up on Flickr, including (somewhat oddly) items apparently intended to show that he is an international playa, e.g. an invitation from the French President to attend Bastille Day celebrations.

Tricolor, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, May 27, 2009.
Of course the pro-Romanian camp has its own cans of spray paint...

Another intriguing online innovation was the chance for voters in Chisinau to check their status on the election rolls online. Those lists which were the focal point of the fraud allegations which followed the April 5th balloting. Not sure how much it helped - Filat claimed (to the press and in a Facebook status update, naturally) to have found two extra people registered in his apartment when he went to vote this morning.

And what of the reverberations from the "Twitter Revolution"? Well, a few days before July 29th, I saw reports (initially on the Facebook feed of prolific Moldovan blogger and Twitterer extraordinaire Mihai Moscovici, later picked up by Unimedia) that fake Twitter accounts - nothing new, and apparently even non-celebrities are at risk - purporting to belong to Vlad Filat and Dorin Chirtoaca were calling for supporters to come protest on July 30th.

I can't think of an appropriate conclusion to this post and already have one foot out the door. I may come back later this evening with some more links and perhaps a report on whatever the scene is at the Moldovan Embassy in London. While I am not overly optimistic about what may follow this evening's vote-counting (which, as we all know, is much more important than the actual voting), permit me to conclude with a more uplifting - and probably apolitical - bit of street art:

Be United, originally uploaded by lyndonk2 - Chisinau, June 17, 2009

Handicapping the Moldovan elections

2009-07-29T11:15:00.001+01:00

How red will Moldovan voters go this time?
[Image: Poppies near Balti, Moldova, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.]

The world's eyes today are on Moldova. Well, OK, maybe not, but people are watching my favorite small country more than usual as its population goes to the polls in repeat parliamentary elections. What will the outcome be? Results from one of the more current public opinion polls (which is already out-of-date given the brevity of the repeat election campaign) can be found here.

Essential reading (the best analysis I've seen in English) is this post by Nicu Popescu; also check out RFE/RL's blog and this Romanian news-portal's ticker in English. In addition, Imedia, a Moldovan news analysis agency staffed by some real media professionals, is posting regular updates, and a member of the Moldovan diaspora in Bologna is liveblogging the voting at the consulate there.

There are a lot of other sources which I may include in a later post if I have time. For now, let's see what Reuters has to say about how things might turn out:

SCENARIOS: HOW MOLDOVA MIGHT EVOLVE AFTER WEDNESDAY'S VOTE
Reuters (UK) - July 28, 2009

Moldova votes in a parliamentary election on Wednesday to choose between Communists advocating a strategic partnership with Russia and liberal opposition parties seeking closer ties with the West.

Outgoing Communist President Vladimir Voronin called an early election last month after the legislature twice failed to endorse his handpicked successor as new president.

After a big communist win in the April 5 parliamentary election, the liberal opposition accused the authorities of vote-rigging. Crowds of mainly young people ransacked the parliament building and the president's office.

Here are some scenarios on how events in Moldova, Europe's poorest country, might unfold after the election.

WHAT POLLS FORECAST

In the 101-member chamber elected on April 5, the Communists held 60 seats, more than the 52 needed to elect the speaker and government, but one short of the number to elect a president.

Polls show a clear drop of support for the Communists, giving them about 30 percent compared to just under 50 percent in April, but a large share of undecided voters could produce a different result on Wednesday.

Two opposition parties, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats, are seen scoring a combined 20 percent. The Democratic Party, led by a Communist defector, has made big gains and could secure 10 percent, enough to win seats.

LANDSLIDE COMMUNIST VICTORY

If the Communists prove the polls wrong and receive 61 seats, they will be free to elect a government and president.

Relations with Russia would remain a priority and a Communist-inspired "strategic partnership" may bring about the disbursement of a $500 million loan promised by Moscow to help Moldova weather the global financial crisis.

Relations with Romania, linked to Moldova through a common language and history, would then remain poor, while ties with the European Union would probably develop, if slowly.

THE COMMUNISTS LOSE GROUND

Should the Communists win between 52 and 61 seats, they would be able to choose a government and speaker but remain unable to secure the election of a president to their liking.

They could form an alliance with the Democratic Party, under its new leader Marian Lupu, a Western-style intellectual who says such a deal will depend on Voronin quitting politics. Voronin wants to keep a hand on politics, like Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Such an alliance, under which the polyglot Lupu could become president, could produce good relations with both Russia and the European Union, as well as with Romania.

THE COMMUNISTS LOSE THE ELECTION OUTRIGHT

Should the Communists fare so badly that even an alliance with the Democratic Party proves impossible, pro-Western and pro-Romanian parties thrust into power could alter foreign policy dramatically.

Strong ties would be established with Romania and the EU and the new government would probably consider withdrawing from the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. But that would require time as Russia accounts for about half of Moldova's foreign trade and over 90 percent of energy imports.

The new authorities would also probably announce plans to join NATO, a move likely to jeopardise relations with Russia and which would be at odds with constitutional provisions for a neutral foreign policy.

A membership bid would also complicate attempts to resolve the 18-year-old separatist rebellion in the Transdniestria region, where Russia keeps a military contingent.

NO GROUP SECURES ENOUGH VOTES TO ELECT A PRESIDENT

If no grouping has enough votes to elect a new president, Voronin will continue as acting president until June 15, 2010 -- a year after dissolving the chamber.

STREET VIOLENCE?

Analysts differ on the prospects of new violent protests.

Some experts say the opposition, if it loses, will fear losing legitimacy in the eyes of the West by openly clashing with the authorities and opt instead for peaceful rallies. Any violent protests are likely to be spontaneous, but the Communists could try to blame unrest on their opponents. Communist-controlled media accused the opposition in the campaign of seeking support from Moldova's criminal underworld.

"Putin goes to Pikalyovo"

2009-07-28T16:03:00.001+01:00

This is kind of funny. One thing missing from the Reuters report (below) is that the video was apparently put together by LJ blogger Oleg Kozyrev. Oh, and for those of you who missed Putin's Pikalyovo "I'm-a-badass (-especially-when-dealing-with-my-pocket-oligarchs)" show the first time around, of course there is video.

Putin's hard man image targeted by spoof Web song
July 27, 2009

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A spoof song which makes fun of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's hard man image as the savior of Russia's battered economy has been winning fans on the Internet.

Public satire of Putin, who stepped down as president in 2008 to become prime minister, is rare and state media present the former KGB spy as the main figure handling the crisis.

Putin last month publicly humiliated factory owners in the town of Pikalyovo and forced them to reopen their plants after workers protested against unpaid wages.

"Putin, Putin goes to Pikalyovo. Putin, Putin will make it cool for us," the Russian lyrics say as a bearded man in a suit gyrates. "Putin, Putin is quick to do justice. Putin, Putin is our Prime Minister."

The Russian song, set to a popular 1970s Czech tune Jozin z Bazin, has had tens of thousands of clicks on the www.youtube.com website in recent days.

Putin is Russia's most popular politician and his influence has fueled speculation that he could seek to return to the Kremlin in the future.

The spoof song says an election is just around the corner and that the result will be clear to everyone. But the song ends by saying the next Russian president will be the monster who gives his name to the original Czech song.

That very popular song tells the story of a village monster which ate tourists.

"Jozin z Bazin is the people's choice ... oligarchs, miners and even cops know that Jozin z Bazin will be our new president."

The song can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Ho1H3HmzM

Map of 1993 fighting in Georgia

2009-07-24T16:05:00.001+01:00

[image source]

I'm not sure how accurate this map is (I found it on Wikipedia, a website which is often a good reminder that you get what you pay for), but it's interesting and I decided to post it in keeping with my practice of posting maps, especially maps of the Caucasus. Full-sized version can be found here.

Миф и Быль

2009-07-24T16:02:00.000+01:00

[image source]

A friend who lives in Moscow emailed this to me. The billboard appears to be advertising a book series titled "Myths about Russia," and the myth highlighted by this billboard is the one "about Russian drunkenness, laziness and cruelty." I may have to trot this out the next time I hear someone lazily trying to bat away an argument with some line about "Russophobic stereotypes."

R.I.P., Izmailovo?

2009-07-23T15:38:00.002+01:00

Izmailovo, originally uploaded by lyndonk2.

I don't want to believe this is true. I want to believe that while they may have shut down the vast Cherkizovsky market - a bureaucratic cat whose nine lives may have run out - that catered to locals right next door, they won't have the heart to permanently get rid of gingerbread-city stage set of the Izmailovskii Vernissage that reliably lured tourists and expats. Cherkizovsky was an amazing place where, shortly after arriving in Moscow in late 2001, we memorably bought a thick 2 x 3 meter carpet and a 3-liter jar of pickles and then had a hell of a time hauling both items home in one of those oversized "kitaiskie sumki." Some parts of that market were like walking into another country, complete with signage and street food from many time zones east.

It is a shame that Luzhkov and others favoring the reconfiguring of Moscow markets to exclude for'ners have failed to understand that such pockets of other-ness always added to Moscow's richness. And even operating from their xenophobic logic, it makes little sense to shut down the Vernissage, since nearly all of the vendors there were Russian, many of them artists and craftspeople selling their own work.

In any event, although we became more locals than tourists in Moscow, my more personal lament is not for Cherkizovsky but for the kitschy, tourist-oriented "Vernissage" section of the market, the one with paid admission to keep the riffraff out, the one with the mean-looking old drunk and his tragic trained bears just outside the entrance, across the walkway from the Central Asians cranking out cheese samsas using a huge iron vessel. If it's true, this means I will never be able to return to the mother lode of Russian souvenirs and flea-market-style borokhlo, or bric-a-brac.

It seems Moscow is no longer the consumer-oriented paradise of the boom years. Where will I now be able to go to buy vintage cuff links, pre-revolutionary books, fine carpets from the Caucasus, pirated DVDs, fake pashmina shawls, embroidered linen tablecloths, hand-carved chess sets, ratty (and not-so-ratty) fur hats, Soviet-era tourist maps, finely painted wooden eggs, and Chicago Cubs nesting dolls? Where will I now find the many missed opportunities of those past weekends spent at Izmailovo? I remember one in particular, an exhaustive collection of mint-condition Soviet-era bottle labels that filled five or six large albums. I couldn't bring myself even to haggle with the guy when he identified his starting price of 20,000 rubles, but now I wish I had bargained him down to 12 or so and walked away with a piece of graphic design history.

The photo above is from a happier, simpler moment - the day after Christmas, 2004, waiting to be warmed by some usually-good-but-never-great Izmailovo shashlyk. If it's true that the place is gone for good, I guess all I can say is, "Thanks for the memories."

Izmailovsky Market Closed
22 July 2009
The Moscow Times

Moscow authorities on Tuesday closed Izmailovsky Market, a magnet for tourists seeking deals on souvenirs, in a crackdown linked to the closure of nearby Cherkizovsky Market.

The prefect for Moscow’s Eastern Administrative District, where the markets are located, ordered the closure after authorities confiscated 5,843 truckloads of merchandise from Izmailovsky between July 11 and 20 and detained 25 people, including 14 Vietnamese citizens who will be deported, police spokeswoman Zhanna Ozhimina told Interfax.

Ozhimina said more than 150 police officers have been deployed to Izmailovsky to maintain public order as the remaining merchandise is removed.

Izmailovsky, which covers 10 hectares between the towering Izmailovo hotel complex and Izmailovsky Park, has been the place to shop for souvenirs since the 1990s. Its hundreds of stands also offered trinkets, Soviet kitsch, clothing and shashlik.

The market has been the site of two fires in the past four years, including one in March 2005 that killed a woman.

Authorities closed Cherkizovsky Market, located on Izmailovsky’s border, late last month during a smuggling investigation sparked by the seizure of $2 billion in Chinese goods last fall. More than 100 Chinese and Vietnamese traders from Cherkizovsky have been deported this month.

Update July 24: It looks like I may have broken out the black mourning clothes for naught - Rubashov has helpfully commented, adding this news from yesterday's MT:

However, the famous Vernisage, where tourists have shopped for souvenirs since the 1990s, remained open Wednesday. Interfax reported Tuesday that the souvenir market, located in the middle of Izmailovsky, had been closed together with the rest of the market.

Stay tuned, I guess...

Update July 28: A very interesting NYT story on what might be behind the closing of Cherkizovsky:

The trouble in this case was that the market’s owner, Telman Ismailov, who had made billions of dollars as Cherkizovsky evolved from a mere flea market into an industrial-scale distribution hub for Chinese imports during the oil boom, had violated unwritten codes of business conduct that put him at odds with Mr. Putin, according to analysts and Russian news reports.

The market was closed with a flurry of citations of fire code and health violations not unlike the use of environmental allegations to force Royal Dutch Shell to sell a portion of its investment in a Siberian oil field two years ago, or the shutdown of the Yukos oil company with tax claims before that. [...]

“Of course, if you applied the official hygiene, fire and labor codes, it was not done the way it was written,” Arseny Popov, an authority on the Chinese diaspora in Russia with the Russian Academy of Sciences, said of the market’s operations. “But nothing was happening there that wasn’t happening for the past 15 years.”

What was new was Mr. Ismailov’s $1.4 billion investment, using proceeds from the market, into a glittering, five-star resort thousands of miles away in a seemingly unrelated world of luxury on the Turkish seaside. It was called Mardan Palace, after Mr. Ismailov’s father, with 560 rooms, 10 restaurants, 17 bars and a lake-size swimming pool.

Mr. Ismailov, an immigrant from Azerbaijan who survived the sharp-elbowed world of street capitalism in the early 1990s to create the Cherkizovsky empire, threw a lavish series of opening parties in May. Mariah Carey was hired to perform a set and sing “Dreamlover” for Mr. Ismailov and his guests. Monica Bellucci, Sharon Stone and Paris Hilton also attended, the resort’s publicist said. The mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, cut the ribbon.
It is unclear what about the lavish resort may have set off the regulatory onslaught. The ostentation in time of economic crisis, the investment abroad of profits made in Russia and a move to undermine Mr. Luzhkov, a one-time rival of Mr. Putin’s, have all been suggested in the Russian press. Mr. Ismailov declined to be interviewed about his market’s closing.
But within a week of the Mardan Palace party, the case had reached the ultimate arbiter of the business affairs and lifestyle of the Russian rich: Mr. Putin.
The prime minister broached the matter at a cabinet meeting June 1, leaving little doubt what he had in mind. “The fight is on, but results are few,” Mr Putin said, referring to smuggled goods at the market, according to news reports. “The results in such cases are prison terms. Where are the prison terms?”

Meanwhile, the people likely to suffer the most serious privation as a result of the shutdown of Cherkizovsky are the tens of thousands of migrant laborers who called the place both work and home. The NYT continues:

Mostly, the laborers can do nothing. Bakhodur M. Mirzoyev, a Tajik, squatted outside the market on a recent afternoon. He has been living in Kazan Train Station. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, open our containers,” he said. “We want to work.”

Asked why the market closed, Mr. Mirzoyev shrugged. The owner, he said, had built a hotel in Turkey. Now he was left with nothing but “three hungry children in Dushanbe.”

An opinion piece by Alexei Pankin in the MT weighs the "versii" and draws a slightly different, no less interesting, conclusion.

A TRNC Precedent?

2009-04-28T17:15:00.001+01:00

An interesting (certainly by the standards of an int'l law journal's website - cf. the concept of "law school hot" - and perhaps even really interesting) discussion of last year's war in Georgia and its possible repercussions:

I have read in the blogosphere and received emails myself claiming that the events in Georgia require a rethinking and rewriting of the laws governing the use of force and the acquisition of territory. I am rather sceptical but would welcome articles arguing the opposite. To me, it is a case of ‘plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose‘.

But let us first address the depressing politics - this time demoralizing world politics perfectly personified by some celestial Central Casting.

First, the breathtakingly cerebrally challenged Saakashvili, whose every move, including throwing the match into the dry tinder, has militated against his desired entry of Georgia into NATO. The conspiracy minded may well claim that he was a Russian agent. His one redeeming feature were his blustering sophomoric news conferences which supplied relief to a very serious situation - comic relief, that is, provided by the squirming dignitaries forced to stand, ex officio, by his side and suffer each of his ‘I told you so…!’

Then we were treated to a rather new scary spectacle - US officials palpably and transparently aware of their real and perceived weakness, also of their lack of credibility, speaking loudly whilst carrying a broken reed. It is a photo-finish as to which America gives us more of a shiver - blustering, over-confident, but strong, or blustering, under-confident, and weak.

And then there was the redoubtable Sarkozy and Merkel (but hardly Solana…!) making all the right noises of ‘engagement diplomacy’, but unable to paper over the deep internal divisions within the Union, and therefore manifesting again Europe’s long inability to translate its economic might into political and military capital - so what’s new? Only Putin comes out entirely in control - hopefully, in the long run, a Pyrrhic victory.

The Russians will not withdraw from the two rump entities any time soon and no one will push them either. Have the Superpowers not been somewhat more equal than everyone else for some time now? That does not make the invasion any more legal than that of, say, Turkey into Cyprus and the status of the rump ’statelets’ is indeed likely to remain more like that of Northern Cyprus than that of Bangladesh. This may not be the time for talking of ’shifting paradigms’ (a less elegant phrase might be ‘koshering the pig’) but perhaps it is rather even more important to hold fast to the old ones oft consecrated in their breech. But I am sure there are other views out there and EJIL or EJIL:Talk! would welcome hearing them.

When I first read this earlier in the year, it made think of an article I saw back in December which made me think of the idea of a "TRNC precedent" (the phrase that popped into my mind, as a natural counterpoint to the idea of a "Kosovo precedent" which has been widely touted by secessionists the world over, but especially in the post-Soviet space) which is alluded to by the author above.

And now there's been an interesting follow-up to that article I saw in December: it seems that Greeks forced out of Northern Cyprus can lay claim to their land in the European Court of Justice. I wonder if this will have an impact on real estate prices in Abkhazia (especially since the registration of property claims by people displaced in the conflict there has been going on for years)?

Greek Cypriots 'can reclaim land'

The EU's top court has backed the right of a Greek Cypriot to reclaim land in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus that has since been sold to a UK couple.
BBC News, 28 April 2009
Meletis Apostolides was one of thousands of Greek Cypriots who fled his home when Turkish forces invaded in 1974, following a Greek-inspired coup.
The land was later sold to Linda and David Orams, who built a villa on it.
The European Court of Justice says a ruling in a Cypriot court that the villa must be demolished is applicable.

Even if the ECJ ruling cannot be enacted because the land is under Turkish Cypriot control, it means Mr Apostolides will be able to pursue a claim for compensation in a UK court.
It could also open the way for hundreds more Greek Cypriots to demand restitution for properties they were forced to flee.
Many Britons and other foreigners have invested in property in northern Cyprus, despite the legal ownership still being in some doubt.
Mr Apostolides said he was "very much" pleased with the EU court's ruling, and that it was "what we expected".
He added: "This is a difficult issue that has to be decided by the courts."
Property boom
The European Court of Justice ruling on Tuesday said that the decision of a Cypriot court in Nicosia was applicable in the north, even though Cyprus does not exercise control there.
It also said that one EU country - in this case the UK - must recognise judgments made in the courts of another.

The Republic of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004.
EU law was suspended in northern Cyprus for the purposes of Cyprus's accession, but lawyers argued successfully that the Orams' civil case still falls within the scope of the EU regulation.
Northern Cyprus is self-governing and still occupied by the Turkish army, but is not recognised internationally.
Nevertheless, it has become a thriving tourist destination in recent years, and house-building has boomed.
Some of those houses have been sold by Turkish Cypriots to foreigners, even though the land they were built on was once owned by Greek Cypriots and its legal status remained uncertain.
Property disputes dating back to 1974 have been one of the main obstacles to efforts to reunify Cyprus.
Correspondents say dispossessed Greek Cypriots are now likely to launch more legal battles, which in turn may harden opposition to reunification among Turkish Cypriots.

Russia's approach to NGOs: the "tarnished image problem" and "preventing color revolutions"

2009-04-28T16:34:00.003+01:00

I happened upon this (admittedly somewhat outdated) paper (pdf) titled "Contextual and Legislative Analysis of the Russian Law on NGOs," by an American named Josh Machleder who was working as an Alfa Fellow at the INDEM Foundation back when this law was big news. I haven't read it closely, but the section headings make it look quite interesting.

Update April 29 - looks like this topic is still current, here's a recent piece on it from OpenDemocracy that I just saw today.

Battling Historical Narratives

2009-04-20T16:06:00.001+01:00

Moldova in Myths and Legends, Chisinau, April 14.

I already pointed out how the government-run newspaper Moldova Suverana equated the protesters / rioters on April 7th with fascist Romanians retaking Chisinau in 1941. Now I have seen the flip side of this exaggeration of historical parallels, in a message sent around a few days ago by an opposition activist:

The Moldovan state authorities' violence against protesters is without precedent. Unlawful arrests, preventing access to a lawyer, torture, sexual abuse towards arrested young women are comparable only with the Soviet times in 1940s, when the country was militarily incorporated in the USSR along with the Baltic States.